Mikal Cronin Streams ‘MCII,’ Grungy Garage-Pop Perfected

San Fran longhair set to release second album May 7

Mikal Cronin trades in a near-perfect combination of garage rock and power-pop. If new songs “Weight” and “Shout It Out” didn’t make that abundantly clear, the San Francisco player’s new album MCII should do the job. The entire thing is streaming right now over at NPR, and it’s everything we’d hoped for from this Ty Segall collaborator and recent SPIN Breaking Out star.

Back in January, Cronin spoke to our own David Bevan about the new album’s instrumental duality: “I definitely see what the distortion pedal is capable of now. That comes out [on this record] here and there, but I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately almost purely to listen to arrangements. I wrote some string parts for this record, which was new for me.”

Similarly, in our write-up of Cronin’s clutch SXSW performance, David Marchese wrote, “You can’t get too comfortable during a Mikal Cronin song … In the space of a few beats, a song like ‘Shout It Out’ would transform from adorable puppy to snarling beast … he ended the set on his back, feedback howling from his guitar.” MCII offers an even split of hooks, beauty and brawn. Stream it here.